Field of the Invention
The present invention generally pertains to fleet management. More specifically, the present invention pertains to fleet manager based control of vehicles utilizing GPS and mobile devices.
Description of the Related Art
Positioning systems such as Global Positioning System (GPS) have many applications. One such application is determining the position of a vehicle. Some vehicles have GPS to assist the driver determine where they are and help them get to a destination.
Businesses that require use of one or more vehicles (“fleets”) often have rules and preferences regarding how and where vehicles may be driven. Some fleet vehicles may be equipped with GPS components to allow for GPS tracking capability. But even with such capabilities, a fleet having only GPS monitoring will do nothing more but indicate to a fleet manager where a particular vehicle is at any given time. It is difficult to determine whether a vehicle operator is operating a vehicle or otherwise driving in a safe manner based solely on GPS generated information.
There is a need in the art for an improved methodology for monitoring the driving habits of the operators of fleet managed vehicles. There is a further need to determine whether these driving habit constitute safe operation thereby alleviating a fleet from potential liability or other costs associated with unsafe driving.